


Recalled to Life

by Dorinda



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Canon Gay Character, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Canon, Survival, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-19
Updated: 2012-10-19
Packaged: 2017-11-16 14:23:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/540392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorinda/pseuds/Dorinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before Jack and Eugene could find Abel Township, first they had to find each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recalled to Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lydia (lydiabell)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lydiabell/gifts).



It wasn't that Eugene wanted to die, exactly. But from his current point of view (in the mud under a hedge, rain dripping through the branches, stomach cramped with sickness and hunger, hallucinating from lack of sleep), he wasn't so sure that he wanted to live anymore, either. Living just took so much more _effort_ now. After the zoms.

I mean, if you could even say "after" the zoms, when they were still here. All over the place. Maybe "after the zoms got everybody". Or worse... "After Dad and Uncle Jerry flew over to visit their boy the globetrotting writer, and somehow they both came down with it, and you couldn't remember anything except that stupid government warning slogan, 'First a cough then a rattle then a moan', over and over in your head, and you couldn't even hear the last things they said, the last real things, the last before" okay that was enough of that.

He pushed his forehead into the mud. The rainwater trickling through his hair and down the sides of his face was puddling there, all soft and sticky. He used to be someone who liked to keep clean. He hadn't even liked to go camping, for God's sake. 

More's the pity, though. Because all you had, after the zoms--after they got the better of everyone--were the leftovers and scraps of civilization, and it was amazing how fast that stuff fell apart and disappeared. No running water. No electricity, of course. Gas heating, gas cooking. Repairs. Garbage collection. Toilets, sewers, and wasn't that a treat. Corpse retrieval, if there was anything to be retrieved. When all the details of civilized life fell down right where they were, left to lay and rot, either you picked yourself up and pulled yourself together almost from scratch...

Or you didn't. And you ended up unable to do anything but jam yourself under a hedge in the rain, hungry and sick and wet and filthy, still feeling so slow. So thick. Like the world had fallen apart on the other side of a heavy plate-glass window, toppling quietly as a sandcastle.

He let his face settle further, muddy water bubbling around his nose and mouth. The numbness crept up over him, as it always did when he wasn't actively fighting it away. Surely it was for the best. He could just sleep.

If it weren't for that whistling noise. Had someone left the kettle on? Was it...was it screaming?

Screaming. Screaming _words_ , people made words, back when there were people, back before Dad and Jerry and the friendly young couple across the way whose names he didn't remember and a cough and a rattle and a moan.

He turned his head just enough to blink his muddy eyes open. So long since he'd heard actual words, he almost couldn't recognize them. And when he did recognize them, he couldn't say he understood them.

"HE'S THE ACE!" the voice screamed. It was hoarse and torn to rags, pushing the sound out by sheer force. 

Eugene craned his aching neck up and peered out through the broken hedge. It was hard to see, through the branches and the drizzle.

"HE'S AMAZING!" The scream was louder now. Louder. As in, coming this way. And this way, Eugene could testify, was a very bad way to come. No one left--no one who you wanted to meet. The remains of homes and shops were clogged with the slow shambling ones. A few toppled buildings along the road concealed buried zoms or crawlers, waiting for you to pass by within grabbing distance. He'd even seen a fast one once, and he never wanted to see another. The food had all decayed and drawn flies and maggots, there was no water, the tinned stuff was all pillaged, no handy stockpiles of anything but dead bodies and human shit, festering in random mounds. Just death, help yourself, a lifetime supply on offer at no cost to you.

"HE'S THE STRONGEST!" Definitely closer. He--it sounded like a he, an English-accented he--would be going right down the main path, and into hell. God help the poor bastard. Eugene hoped at least it would be quick, but he couldn't help silently cursing the man for making him listen to it. He'd heard enough. He'd never be able to stop hearing the things he'd heard. Not until he could finally just sleep.

"HE'S THE QUICKEST!" Getting very close.

Eugene snarled, muddy saliva spattering from his lips. Maybe he didn't want to hear any more. Maybe he was so damn tired of it that he'd fallen right out on the other side of tired. Maybe now he was angry. 

He writhed and bucked, squirming out from under the hedge, the numbness jolting away into sharp pains in every joint and a renewed spike deep in his belly. Just as he scrambled to his feet, the screamer let loose again, no more than twenty feet away.

"HE'S THE BEST!"

It did appear to be a man, and the man also appeared to be pretty much completely insane. He was youngish and tallish, or at least taller than Eugene, and wan under a layer of grime. His hair was tangled and greased into wild spikes and points, his unshaven face and his ragged Pink Floyd T-shirt splattered with more of whatever it was that caked his hair and lashes. 

Oh, "whatever it was," sure--it was dark reddish-brown, clotted and stiff, of course Eugene knew what it was. Even from this distance he thought he could smell it. In the man's dirty, sticky hands he clutched something diagonally across his chest, rifle-style: a...club? A paddle?

Eugene held up both hands, palms out. "Listen--" he heard himself saying. His voice sounded thin and airless.

"DANGERMOUUUUUUUSE!" the man replied, the scream going up a key. Rainwater had trickled reddish smears down his face like camouflage.

Eugene blinked. "...I thought that sounded a little familiar," he said at last. The man was still walking forward, slow but steady, his shoes smooching through the mud. Eugene shuffled backward to compensate. He really didn't want to be in range of that...cricket bat, yes, of course, he could see now that it was a cricket bat. A well-used cricket bat, dark with gore.

"Look," he tried. "Look, will you--come on--will you just wait?" Back a few more steps.

The man's eyes didn't quite seem to see him. "HE'S TERRIFIC!" he screamed, and his teeth shone out from the dark blotches splashed across his mouth.

The back of Eugene's neck was prickling and cold. He desperately didn't want to back up any more--he knew too well what was behind him. He licked his lips, tasted grit, and then found himself shouting, "HE'S MAGNIFIC!" He didn't have the same volume, but it wasn't so bad.

The steady smooching of the mud slowed and hitched. There might have been a glimmer in his eyes, if it wasn't the rain. He stared at Eugene. _At_ Eugene, with something like awareness. 

Eugene slid one more step back. Just in case. "I always thought that should've been a real word," he said to those mad eyes. "I mean, it gets right to the point, doesn't it."

The eyes blinked a couple of times, red rainwater smudged and running beneath them. He slowed...he stopped. The bat still waited in ready position. Eugene was just belatedly wondering if he'd take poorly to someone interfering with his TV theme song, when the man spoke again.

"HE'S THE GREATEST SECRET AGENT IN THE WORLD." Not a scream this time, but forceful, a heavy chant, making Eugene wince inwardly at the rasp across what sounded like horribly abraded vocal cords.

"Dangermouse," Eugene replied, giving the lyric its stress but not trying to sing.

"Puh-POWERHOUSE." 

"He's the fastest, he's the greatest, he's the best!" This time he did try to sing, kind of, and it came out soft but surprisingly even. 

The man's mouth worked, his jaw muscles clenching and relaxing over and over, but he didn't finish up with the last few climactic Dangermouses. Dangermice. Eugene hoped that wasn't a bad sign. 

"Excuse me," Eugene said carefully. "I didn't mean to interrupt."

Nothing. Just the jaw, hard and knotted.

"Listen, you don't want to go there, okay. Into the village, I mean."

No, still nothing. At least no move of the cricket bat either, but this strange sort of stalemate couldn't go on. Even a few minutes of standing there with his back to the ruins had him exhausted and shivering with nerves, and the rain wasn't helping. He thought longingly of his muddy burrow under the hedge, when he was through with standing up and doing...anything, really. Through with all this _trying_ , which had not really worked out. Not for him, and certainly not for anyone else. 

"Not to tell you your own mind," he said--to himself, since mad-eyes was obviously not tuned to receive. "But you really don't want to. I mean. It's a cliché, saying 'you'll be sorry'. But...you will. Be sorry."

The eyes stared through him for a few more long seconds. But then, as startling as a shout, they blinked--once slowly, then a few quick flutters right in a row.

"Where're you from," the man said abruptly. Without the forcible effort of the scream or the chant, his voice was in tatters, husky and cracked to the point of vanishing altogether.

"Canada," Eugene said, and heard the hesitant uptick in his voice. Well, fine, there was some extra proof, if there'd been any lingering doubts. "What was--yeah, it was the sorry, right? Yeah. That always-- Sor-- Uh." He clamped his teeth on the tip of his tongue.

The man didn't seem to pay any attention to that. He stared Eugene down and up, and his eyes, while at least blinking now, had lost none of their long-distance red stare. "What're you doing here?"

The question sounded sullen, even demanding, and the same fury that had pulled Eugene out from under the hedge in the first place crackled down his spine. "Oh, I don't know," he said. "I suppose I'm trying to keep you from charging right into Zom Central and getting your face ripped off!"

The man glowered at him from beneath the spattered mask. "Won't happen, mate," he said, and gave the bat one hard thump against his own chest. "Not with me and W.G. here. Bring on their fast bowlers."

Eugene couldn't help it--he laughed, an actual open-mouth laugh that bubbled all the way up from his sore belly. Probably courting a nice shot straight to the face, adding some fresh decoration to the bat.

"Okay!" he managed cheerfully. "You just go ahead! Enjoy your game! And when all your noise draws the buried ones up and the fast ones in, and there's a crawling one from the corner you hadn't seen, and maybe just one scratch at first, something you hardly even notice--once they're finished chewing on you and your friend there, and they come out after me, I'll make sure to give you a proper round of applause at the end of the innings!" He hiccuped as his stomach clenched with something that was half-laugh, half-cramp. "What's your name?"

The glower had become a dark, narrow-eyed frown, but the man still answered. "Jack." 

"Great, nice, thank you. I'll go carve it somewhere, and the date, and why not mine too, so that they'll have something for our gravestones. If there were anyone to bury us, which there isn't."

"It's nothing to do with you," Jack muttered. By now his voice was mostly just consonants, the vowels fading to hoarse air.

"You think so?" Eugene said. He found himself actually taking a step forward, as if he could force some sense into that dull, grim face, W.G. be damned. "You come down _my_ path toward _my_ village, with your little song and your fast bowlers, just asking the damn things to come out and play! Like you think you're some kind of, of Terminator or something. Well, let me tell you, _Jack_ \--" and spitting the name out like that felt suddenly glorious, using his voice as his own bat, sending the ball over the ropes-- "--that is _stupid_. That is _ridiculous_. That is _not a plan_."

Jack scoffed something or other, but without any sound to the vowels, and with the consonants all snarled together through his teeth, it was anyone's guess.

"A plan!" Eugene singsonged. "You know, like a series of steps that all add up to useful progress!" Oh, this did feel good. Jack's eyes were definitely focusing on him now, the dazed emptiness clearing at least a little bit, an honest spark starting to show beneath it. Angry, yes, startled and affronted, yes, but with someone inside. It had been too long since Eugene had looked into someone else's eyes and really seen them in there.

"Hello, I'm Jack!" Eugene held up one of his hands, flapping the fingers together like a puppet's mouth. "My bright idea is to walk right into a giant deadly wasps' nest carrying nothing but a board with a--"

" _Oy_!" Jack roared, or tried to, though in his condition it was mostly a dramatic shaping of his lips and a gust of breath.

"--a _board_ ," Eugene said again, leaning in, the puppet-hand dancing animatedly, "with a handle on it! I think that I am immortal! Or maybe just that I will taste really good! So why deprive a whole village of my deliciousness?" 

Up came the other hand, these fingers speaking more firmly and neatly than the other. A hand that knew what it was doing. "Hello," this puppet said. "I'm Eugene. I gave more than three seconds of thought to the best course of action. I decided to--"

_Crawl under a hedge and die_ , his brain reminded him.

"-- _think_ ," the Eugene-hand said emphatically. "And by thinking, _survive_."

Jack's fists were still clenched around the bat--Eugene suspected it was basically glued in there, given the stickiness of...various substances--but his arms seemed to be easing, uncurling the bat away from his chest. He cocked his head slightly and shifted his weight, and all of a sudden this didn't feel like a confrontation. Jack was watching him not so much angrily, as avidly. 

"And what are the basics of survival?" asked the Eugene-hand, professorially. "Safety. Water. Shelter. Food." It enumerated each point on one of the fingers making up its mouth. "In that order! And you," finger one became an accusing pointer right at the middle of the Pink Floyd logo, "seem entirely determined to ignore basic! Number! One!" Jab, jab, jab--in the air, though, not quite touching. "Safety, in this case--" The puppet swept a gesture back toward the silent remains of the village. "--means away from here. And which way is away?"

Eugene and his hand meant it rhetorically, as many a schoolteacher of his had done back when there were schools and teachers, but Jack suddenly grumbled something and pointed back over his own shoulder with a jerk of his chin.

"That's right," said the hand approvingly. "So! About face!" 

Jack stared past him for a moment, down the path into the village, and then slowly turned around and started trudging the other way. Mud was caking in clots on his shoes, leaving big, formless footprints.

The hand looked expectantly at Eugene. Eugene looked back at the hand. Beneath the rainwater and the dirt, the splinter in one knuckle, the broken fingernails with traces of blood down in the quick, it seemed calm somehow. Ready for the next thing. He almost asked it what to do, but at this point, there was a very good chance it might answer, and he guessed he wasn't ready to go there just yet. Instead, he squished along after Jack, past and away from his quiet hole under the hedge.

* * *

Number two on the list: water. Fresh water shouldn't be hard to come by, luckily, what with all the rain. Eugene paid more attention to the garbage strewn along the sides of the path, and ended up with a child's plastic bucket, along with a few empty fruit juice bottles that would be easy to rinse and fill. He stuffed them in a plastic carrier bag and made his way up to Jack, whose slogging pace hadn't let him get very far ahead.

"Voilà," Eugene said, holding up the bag. "Supplies."

Jack looked intently at him, his eyes still slow to focus, awareness a dull spark somewhere down inside. 

"Bottles," Eugene said, swinging the bag so it clinked. "For water."

Jack's voice husked, then he cleared his throat rustily and tried again: "Bottles." 

"We should find a place to fill them," Eugene said. He thought he still sounded like the puppet, even with his hand full. 

"I..." Jack hesitated. The tip of his tongue showed for a moment against the cracked corner of his mouth. "This is. Uh. Probably the way I came. But I don't..." He shook his head, frowning down at the cricket bat. The last sounds had leached from his voice; decoding him was like reading lips.

Eugene had no ideas, even though he'd passed by here all the time. Before. But Jack was plodding forward, in the right direction. He was listening.

"We'll find someplace," Eugene said.

* * *

To his surprise they did, eventually, after the path met a bigger road: a few wooden bureau drawers were scattered along the verge with some other broken boards, as if they'd fallen off the back of a truck or the top of a speeding car. One had landed upside-down, another was too cracked to hold much, but a third one was clean and sound and had lain open to the rain. 

Eugene knelt beside it and dug through his bag. He carefully scooped water with the little pail, rinsing out the bottles and filling them to the brim. When he’d trumphantly capped the third one, he looked around. Jack hadn't stopped with him. Jack was, in fact, nowhere to be seen.

Eugene imagined Jack shuffling in a straight line, for all the world like a zom who didn't know it yet, right into a ditch, or an open sewer, or an ornamental pond. _Well_ , he told himself, _at least you gave him a cleaner death. Why didn't you just invite him in under your hedge, save all this trouble_.

He climbed to his feet, wobbling a little, clutching the empty bottle. No sign of Jack down the road ahead, or down the path behind, or--

_Crash_. The sound of breaking glass, not far away. That numb feeling churned up in Eugene's stomach again, spreading cold tendrils out to the tips of his fingers and toes, up into his throat. Before--or what came right after Before, what had turned Before into Now--he'd learned the hard way that noise meant danger and danger meant death. You didn't go toward the noise.

Except his numb feet were taking him toward the noise. 

"Jack," he said. He felt out of breath.

Up ahead, the buildings close to the road had burned down, leaving nothing but charred foundations, not even enough rubble for a crawler to hide in. But set back maybe fifty feet was a well-made shed, maybe for gardening or for storing motorbikes, painted green with white trim around the windows and door. 

"Jack?" He approached the shed, saw the glitter of broken glass on the ground beneath one of its windows, saw the door standing ajar. "Jack!"

Suddenly Jack was there in the doorway. He had the cricket bat hanging from one fist, and his other hand was thrust out toward Eugene, showing the flat of his palm. His mouth moved, but there was no sound.

"What?" Eugene said, breaking into a trot. "What, what!"

Jack scowled and pushed the palm at him again. Now that Eugene was closer, he could watch Jack's mouth shape the words. "Stay. Back."

The coldness flowed up from Eugene's throat through his eyes and ears and mouth, fading his senses, flooding him, like he was submerged in ice water.

He thought he was talking, he thought at least his mouth was moving-- _Did you get scratched, did you, are you hurt_ \--but he couldn't hear himself. The words he had said so often, so futilely, they were graven into his tongue, they hurt and scoured like salt in the socket of a rotten tooth. _Are you hurt, it's not so bad, you'll be fine, just fine, it's not so_

Jack disappeared back inside the shed. A hundred years went by, bubbling under the ice water. Then Jack reappeared, without the bat, wearing long pink rubber gardening gloves. One more palm shoved in Eugene's direction, forceful and pink. Then he bent down to something.

As Eugene stood there and wasn't sure he was breathing, Jack slowly dragged a thin, bedraggled, rotted figure out of the shed and away, sweeping a bare trail in the dust. He dragged patiently, steadily, dwindling in the distance. But Eugene just stood. In between surges of white noise in his head, he thought about the cricket bat. Nothing about it in particular. Just. Bat.

A whisper. He couldn't understand it. No trouble. What was there to understand, here in his muddy puddle under a hedge under the sea.

A blur in front of his eyes, pink, back and forth and back. 

A face, unshaven and dirty. Reddened eyes peering into his. Someone home.

"Eugene," whispered the mouth.

_Someone's calling you_ , Eugene reminded the puppet. But it just hung there by his side, lifeless.

"Eugene. It's okay."

_it's not so bad, it's just, it's, oh_

A whistling noise. Not like the kettle, though, not like the kettle screaming for someone to come get it. Halting and choppy, but tuneful. And the tune brought some words to mind.

_He's the greatest secret agent in the world... Dangermouse! Powerhouse! He's the fastest, he's the greatest, he's the best! Dangermouse... Dangermouuuuse... Dangermouuuuuuuuse!_

Slowly blinking, slowly breathing, waking on his numb feet as the ice melted, Eugene eventually could see Jack in front of him. Whistling laboriously. Rubbing a wadded scrap of wet cloth across his own face, his arms. Dirt and blood smearing away--old blood, old and dark and dried to a sticky crust, nothing fresh. Nothing new. And no scratches, no cuts, just long limbs and bare skin, so fragile.

"What," he managed. 

Jack looked up. He smiled hesitantly, creasing the remaining dirt on his cheek. Mouthed something.

Eugene shook his head.

Jack mouthed it again. "Number three. Shelter."

Eugene looked at the shed. Pink rubber gardening gloves lay on the ground in front of the door.

"Sorry," Jack mouthed. "Sorry about the window."

* * *

Eugene got the broken glass cleared away and Jack scrounged the top from a footstool to wedge tightly in the open frame. Jack's quick battle with the zom hadn't left any traces but scuffs and footprints in the dust, which Eugene carefully swept away with a cobwebby broom he'd found leaning in the corner.

The full water bottles in their carrier bag stood under a bench. Their shirts, sopped and wrung out, hung over the bench to dry. Jack lay on his side, on a nest of grass and rubber gloves and a couple of colourful gardening pinafores; Eugene had a shabby raincoat wrapped around some grass and leaves, and pillowed his head on a little sack of mulch. Jack rested one hand on W.G., palm steady on the grip, his thumb repetitively smoothing back and forth.

"Well, someone has to sleep first," Eugene said. 

Jack shook his head.

"I know, me neither, but _someone_ has to."

Jack mouthed something, but the sun was sinking, and there was only one unboarded window to let the light in (a transom high over the door, and too small for even a zom to get through, or it wouldn't have stayed unboarded for long). 

"You should rest your voice." Eugene shifted and turned over, digging into his back pocket with two fingers.

Jack grumbled, following the cadence of Eugene's sentence exactly. Eugene grinned. "Yeah. But listen. I have a surprise." He extracted the wad of paper from his pocket and carefully unfolded it. It was wet, but not all the way through, and he was surprised to see how well he could still read it.

"?" came a surly noise from Jack.

"It's a book. Well--part of a book. Most of it. It was one of my old schoolbooks, I always had it around someplace. And it fit in my pocket, it was easy to bring on the trip, so... it just sort of came along for the ride." He eased a page over. 

"?" Less surly this time, more curious.

"Uh, it's A Tale of Two Cities. Dickens." Eugene smiled weakly. "Sorry about that, I know not everyone... It was just from school." He shrugged, leaves crunching under the mackintosh. "You can read it, if you want. Maybe it'll help you sleep."

Jack shook his head and lifted his caressing hand from W.G., first to point at Eugene, then to make a beckoning gesture around his own ear.

Eugene laughed a little, despite himself. "Yeah, I could, I suppose. You sure?"

Jack rolled his eyes and beckoned again, sharply.

"Okay, don't say I didn't warn you." Eugene looked closely at the first legible page. "And I'll wake you when it's your turn to watch."

A snort.

"The first pages are missing, but you know that bit, right, 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times'."

Jack nodded and half-shrugged.

"It's 1775, and this first part has a banker named Mr. Lorry riding in a coach on the Dover road, on a cold and misty night. Basically, he gets a message from a rider, that tells him to wait for someone at Dover. And he gives the answer, 'Recalled to life'."

"?"

"It's kind of in code. You'll see. Anyway, this is the first page I have, the section called 'The Night Shadows'."

Jack settled in, W.G. quiet under his hand like a big wooden teddy bear.

"'A wonderful fact to reflect upon,'" Eugene read, "'that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.' Uh...sorry, this part's maybe not as interesting."

But when Jack shook his head impatiently, he read straight on: "'A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!'"

The dark houses and the beating heart seemed to have caught Jack's imagination. Unless, Eugene thought, it was the hundreds of thousands of breasts.

"'Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all.' Sorry, it's missing a couple lines here, it got torn." 

He looked up at Jack's soundless laugh, and smiled. "Yeah, I guess I can't read all of _this_ dear book, then. Um--'It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is deh-dead--"

His voice caught, tight at the top of his throat right under the jaw, stinging. He stared at the page very hard. "...On the, on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbor is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inex- inex-" He tried to draw a breath and couldn't. The very centre of his chest was knotted like a muscle cramp, pressing inward, merciless, crushing. 

Something touched his arm, and he jumped. Jack's hand, cleaner than it had been even if not truly clean, slid warmly around his wrist and held it. Jack's thumb stroked the pulse-point, back and forth, and Eugene was only able to glance up into his eyes for a quick second.

Then he looked away, forcing the corners of his lips up, and said in a thin and reedy voice, "Won't W.G. be jealous?"

Jack just kept hold of him. The passes of his thumb were slow and even, and after a while, Eugene felt more air seeping in around the edges of that knot in his chest. He carefully drew the rest of a breath. When he felt he could trust his voice, he spoke: "I'm sorry I called it a board with a handle."

The grip on his wrist tightened and shook his arm back and forth. When Eugene was able to look up again, really smiling this time, Jack had a playful frown and was mouthing something dire.

"Okay, okay," Eugene said. "Who am I to come between a man and his wood?"

Jack's eyebrows rose. Eugene's face felt hot; he thumbed through the damp pages. "Uhhh, let's see, where were we. Um, okay, it's Jerry, the messenger, yeah? 'The messenger rode back at an easy trot, stopping pretty often at ale-houses by the way to drink...'" 

Jack finally did sleep for a while, although he'd been following the story with an attention Eugene found surprising. His hand stayed clasping Eugene's wrist until he was honestly deeply asleep, and then trailed limply off to rest again on W.G.'s handle.

* * *

The water and the sleep, and even the improvement in cleanliness, all combined to make Eugene seriously, agonizingly hungry. It was as if his entire digestive system had shut down and given up for a while, but now that he was more or less functioning again--or at least pretending to be--his stomach and guts had roared back to life and were set to torment him. You would've thought a gardening shed would be complemented by, oh, say, a proper garden, with vegetables and things. But you would be wrong, and you would only find flowers.

They started up the road at sunrise, the clear sky promising midsummer heat, the dried mud scraped from their shoes. There had been no discussion about where they were going; they just fell in side-by-side, Jack on the right to give him room to swing, Eugene carrying the bag and the broom from the shed. When there was interesting garbage strewn by the road, Eugene poked through it while Jack kept an eye out. This way they scavenged a canvas bag with one broken handle (which was sturdier for the water bottles), a muddy package of disposable razors, and a velveteen cushion that Eugene hoped would be comfortable when it dried out.

Whatever or whoever had burned down so many of the buildings along this particular stretch of road had been very busy; standing structures were hard to come by. On the one hand, fewer places for zoms to hide. On the other...just fewer places. No other people, no helpful supplies other than the occasional trash. No fresh shirt for Jack--who, to be fair, didn't seem to be as disgusted with the state of his T-shirt as Eugene secretly was. 

The sheer absence of anyone else, friend or foe, let Eugene's mind settle over time into a strange low gear, in which he and Jack were walking on a giant treadmill. The road rolled slowly under their feet, the verge and the rubble drifting past on both sides. Eugene felt they would be walking like this until the end: the last men on earth, on the last road on earth, with the last sun on earth sluggishly rising for its final fall. 

As they headed around a sharp curve, though, the illusion broke and scattered. The curve was blind, and the last drivers out had most likely been panicky, if not already infected and turning even as they tried to flee. Metal had crumpled into metal, one car on its side at the end of a huge black streak of skid lines and gouged asphalt, two others telescoped together into a brutal modern sculpture of steel and fiberglass and plastic and glittering chunks of safety glass.

Eugene hesitated, balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to run, staring at the wrecks intently. His peripheral vision seemed doubly wide and almost electric; he could tell Jack had stopped too, brandishing the bat with his arm muscles gone corded and tight.

_Run_ , said Eugene's spine and legs. He kept remembering with bright sharp flashbulb clarity the car crash back in the village, where he'd approached the wreck with open hands--to help? To search? He couldn't remember now--and out through one smashed window had squirmed a crawler, legs severed, gashed throat bubbling with low, wet, hungry moans. 

_RUN_

Eugene's thigh muscles ached in pulses from the adrenaline shocking through them. But Jack wasn't moving, wasn't fleeing. He was ready to fight. And though it took all Eugene's remaining strength, he forced himself to keep still, to stay with him. 

Nothing moved. Nothing breathed...or moaned. Nothing crawled. Eugene wasn't sure who began it, but he found that he and Jack were easing, half-step by half-step, toward the two cars that were crushed together. He'd dropped the bag at some point--he didn't quite remember when--and had barely enough mind left to hope that he hadn't broken the water bottles. He gripped the broom in dry, hot fists, and took the left flank while Jack took the right.

"Anything?" Jack whispered.

Eugene tried to answer, had neither air nor saliva for it, and forced himself to swallow twice. "Nuh... nothing." And it was true. There was debris, and a couple of things probably from a backseat--some torn plastic bags, an unidentifiable bobblehead doll with a bent spring sticking crookedly out of its neck like a ruptured spine. But no remains, and no zoms helping themselves (or puzzled and hungry in the wreckage and waiting for fresh meat to walk by and tempt them out). 

He glanced to his right, and met Jack's eyes glancing to the left. They edged past the first two cars and headed for the far one resting on its side, its long path of destruction marking the road like an arrow. 

Just as he was pulling in a careful breath to check in with Jack--who was taller and had a better angle from his side--the cricket bat was swinging a fierce arc upward through the air. Every nerve ending in Eugene's body surged white-cold and overloaded, and he stumbled forward with the broom frozen to his numb hands. 

"Hey!" Jack shouted. His voice was already coming back after the restful night and the quiet day, hoarse but there, and he twirled the bat up and around one more time, grinning broadly at Eugene.

Eugene stared at him past the broom, held trembling at the ready.

"Look!" Jack bent down eagerly and came up holding a can. A sealed can. With a label. 

BAKED BEANS, it said. 

"Um," Eugene managed to say through the constriction in his throat, the cold weight on his chest. "With."

He wasn't sure what he meant by that, or what else he intended to say. All he was sure of was that it was suddenly dark, too dark to see if there were any more cans, or if Jack's smiling, moving mouth had anything else to tell him.

There was a warm weight on the back of his neck. He stared ahead at his bedraggled shoes, at the surface of the road, pitted asphalt gleaming with the dust of pulverized glass.

"Breathe," said a hoarse voice. "Breathe. It's okay. Keep your head down and just breathe."

He breathed. As his mind cleared he knew he was bent over, knees flexed, head down. The broom was still clenched in both fists. Jack stood by him, one hand gentle on his neck, the other as ever holding the bat. 

"Sorry." Jack sounded choked and bereft, like he'd dropped something fragile and smashed it past all repair.

Eugene looked at his own hands tight around the broom handle. He looked at Jack's big feet, at the bat held in a practised grip. He remembered yesterday's whistling. _Dangermouse... powerhouse_. Jack's hand on his neck was tentative, almost timid. 

Forcefully ignoring the thumping of residual panic in his stomach, he twisted his head sideways and peered up. From this angle, Jack's face looked especially miserable.

"I'm sorry," Jack said urgently. "You all right, then? I didn't mean to-- It's just that it was--"

"Please..." Eugene said weakly, pulling a shallow breath. "...for..."

Jack bent down to him, leaning in close.

"...For God's sake..." Eugene hissed. "WHERE ARE THE BEANS."

Possibly bad timing, since Jack's hand was already on his neck, which meant it was easy for Jack to shake him back and forth by the scruff like an unruly puppy. Or possibly good timing, since the shaking startled out the first truly happy laugh Eugene had had in ages. He might've even called it a giggle.

"You!" Jack howled in time with the shaking. "Giant! Plonker!" 

Eugene ducked out from under the hand and came up flushed and breathless to meet Jack's wide, scowling smile. "I have priorities," he said primly. 

Jack stared at him for a moment; Eugene saw something in his face that looked like amazement, or even gratitude. Then Jack suddenly raised one clawed and threatening hand (Eugene noticed he didn't lift the bat at him even in play), and came toward him in a slow Frankenstein lurch. 

"Ahhh!" Eugene said, though not too loud (they hadn't drawn out any zoms in earshot so far, but why tempt fate?), and fled in his best monster-movie slow-mo. Jack chased him at a gentle half-speed over to the can's last known location, where Eugene snatched it up from the ground and cradled it to his chest. The can felt smooth, no splits or bulges, the label unfaded and hardly even torn. 

"Hello," he murmured to it. "Do you want to come home with us?"

Jack beamed at the can like a proud father, then turned and poked at the remains of the car, eyes alight. "Where there's one..."

"You think they travel in flocks?" Eugene said absently, stroking the colourful label with his fingertips.

Unfortunately, they didn't, at least not this time. There was a ruptured bag that used to hold pretzels, now containing nothing but salty dust and some ants. There was a thermos without a cap, mold growing around its mouth. There was--

\--or more precisely, there _wasn't_. 

"Can opener," Eugene said, aghast. 

Jack rummaged all over again, but still nothing. "There might be a sharp enough metal edge here somewhere," he said, though dubiously. "Like in one of the wheel wells, or--" He ducked down, scanning the car's frame and underside. But the damage was mostly crumpling and cracking, leaving compressed metal and scattered shards of plastic with no good jagged steel spikes. Eugene silently cursed modern cars.

Jack stood up, disconsolate, and then looked thoughtfully at W.G.

"No."

"Maybe if I just--"

" _No_. Even if you could eventually beat it into submission somehow, I'm not losing _one bean_. We'll have to wait till we find something better." Jack opened his mouth to argue, but Eugene said firmly, "Think of W.G.! What if it got chipped?"

That was an unanswerable gambit. Eugene retrieved the bag (the bottles luckily unbroken) and sadly tucked the can inside. His stomach gave a loud, protesting gurgle and clenched so hard that it bent him forward a little bit. He glared at the smashed cars, as if the can had been put in there just to torment him. Would it have taken so much effort to pack it more carefully? Maybe to put it in a fireproof steel box, locked in the--

He started, and flapped the broom at Jack. "The trunk!"

Jack brightened all over. He even looked a little taller. "The boot!" he cried hoarsely in happy correction, and went to see, gloating aloud over the possibilities of an emergency toolkit and maybe even road flares for afters. There were two trunk compartments to try (one of the trunks in the double-accordion smash being completely full of the other car). Jack found the release lever for one, and Eugene found a key for the other still poking out of the steering column.

But in the end, their triumph was short-lived. The lever flopped back and forth uselessly--the connecting cable must have been sheared--and the bent locking assembly did not budge. The key didn't even quite fit all the way in. And in a crowning touch of bad luck, neither of the cars was the type where you could get into the trunk by folding down the back seat.

They stood together in the middle of the road. Jack was breathing hard through his nose in barely-suppressed fury; Eugene had the useless key gripped so hard in one hand that he could feel it digging painfully into the flesh of his palm. Hunger was chewing on him, stomach and head, leaving him angry and sick and unable to think past the bright spikes of want. His fist knotted--the teeth of the key bit down.

"Oh," he said. "Ohhh. Idiot."

Jack's head swung toward him, heavy and slung forward like a maddened bull looking for the cape.

"Not you," Eugene said, but then, "No, yes, you. Me, and you." He held up his hand, right in front of Jack's darkening frown, and unrolled the stiff, sore fingers...revealing the little key on his palm.

Jack looked at it blankly for a minute. Then all at once, enlightenment washed over him. Eugene had never actually seen a look like that in a real person's eyes before. It was like a commercial about Christmas mixed with Disneyland mixed with chocolate fudge sundaes, directed by Steven Spielberg with one of those scores full of rich swelling violins.

"You're a genius," Jack breathed.

"I was in the Scouts for a little while. Before I discovered videogames." He took a step back. "Now, wait till we get it open before you take a bite, yeah?"

"Maybe." Jack grabbed the canvas bag, Eugene grabbed the broom, and they hurried off the road.

With a rock for a hammer, the key for a nail, a small store of patience, and the occasional creative string of curses, Eugene slowly punched holes in the lid all the way around. Jack crouched by him, eyes flicking down to the can, up and around, down to the can, over and over. 

When the lid finally came up, the smell of the beans and sauce inside was rich and dizzying. Eugene laughed a little, weakly, feeling drunk in the best way, and Jack smiled back at him with the intensity of a searchlight.

They feasted, there on the side of the road, by the smashed cars and the strewn glass. Their hands were dirty and the beans were tepid and mealy. It was glorious.

* * *

Fed and watered, prone to catching each other’s eyes and smiling like they had a secret joke, they made good time through the afternoon. Jack still couldn't remember if he'd been down this particular road before, given the condition he'd been in, but Eugene knew it was leading them toward more populated areas. 

"More zoms," he said thoughtfully.

"More people," Jack said, and Eugene couldn't really argue with that. Not everyone had turned, and the more healthy people they could find, the better.

"Proper can openers," he answered instead.

"Dunno...you did a pretty good job. Could hire you out."

"I'll keep it in mind..." _...you crazy person_ , said his tone. Jack tipped his head back and smirked into the air.

At last, a complete and undamaged house came into view. A renovated cottage, with a driveway and a front garden; definitely nothing shabby. The front door was closed, the windows boarded, a good solid hideout. But there were no cars in the drive and no clear signs of recent use.

They stopped for a brief war council and agreed on their plan, such as it was. This time, Eugene set the canvas bag carefully on the verge, out of harm's way. He hoped.

With the tip of the broomstick, Eugene rang the bell, then hopped back at the ready. Jack waited, his gaze fixed grimly on the door.

Nothing. A second ring, and a third--they could hear it trilling away inside--and finally Eugene called out, "Hello? Anyone home? It's--"

_It's us_ , he'd been about to say, though he had no idea what he meant. Hello, honey, we're home? "I'm Eugene, and this is Jack! We don't... we're not..."

"Don't say 'we're not going to hurt you,'" Jack muttered. "It'll just make them think we're definitely here to hurt them."

"Well then?"

"Hello!" Jack called out, his voice still a bit scratchy. "Uh... We come in peace!"

"Oh, genius," Eugene said, but he had to bite the inside of his cheek against a smile.

No response at all, not to ringing or shouting or coaxing, not at either of the doors or any of the boarded windows, so they set about finding a way in. Most of an hour and several bruised shoulders later, the back door latch finally gave. 

"It looked a hell of a lot easier on TV," Eugene said, following Jack cautiously into the back hall.

"Yeah. So did life after zombies, though." Jack peered around a corner, then gave the OK sign. "You never saw anyone worrying about where to go to the toilet." 

They crept into the kitchen; Jack and W.G. pried a board off one window for light while Eugene ransacked the drawers. There wasn’t really anything in them that was important enough to justify the extra carrying weight--and no knives left at all, he was particularly sorry to see, since he was not feeling very useful with his broom. But! He held up one triumphant fist, and he and Jack took a silent moment to commune with the little can-opener before Eugene slid it lovingly into his back pocket. The refrigerator and cupboards were stripped bare of edibles, except for a crumpled packet of soup mix that someone had overlooked. Eugene wrapped it in a piece of greaseproof paper that had been lining one of the drawers and tucked it into his other back pocket.

"I know what's for dinner tonight," he said. 

"We should have a party." Jack edged into the next room, barely sidestepped a table, and set to removing one of the window boards. 

Eugene waited for his eyes to adjust while Jack worked. "But who should we invite?"

"Once they get a smell of our-- _soup_ \--" Jack gave one more heave and yanked the board away, letting in a dusty stream of sunlight. "We'll be the most popular boys in--"

"Shh!" Eugene half-crouched without meaning to, holding up the broom. Jack froze, bat in one hand and board in the other. They listened.

Over the dull hammer of his pulse in his ears, Eugene heard it again, and then again. It was like a moth fluttering itself into a hot lightbulb, over and over--if the moth had grown to the size of a chicken. 

Jack lowered the board to the floor and took up his grip on W.G.'s handle. He looked in the direction of the noise, down a short hallway, and then back. He wasn't moving, though; it really looked like he was leaving it up to Eugene. 

Eugene's thoughts jittered and raced. There was that problem again, where being with Jack meant he made himself go toward noises. But then, if they could clear the place, they'd have a safe spot to eat and sleep tonight. Maybe there'd be fresh clothes, some way to wash. If he could lie down with a pillow under his head, clean and warm, maybe he could pretend just for one night that things were okay. 

He nodded.

Slowly, carefully, their footfalls cushioned by a thick carpet-runner, they moved down the hall. 

It led to a living room, which was far too dark for Eugene's liking. He stood with one hip pressed against a sofa and listened as hard as he could, over the sound of Jack working on a window board. The noise wasn't too far away, which made the back of his neck shiver and crawl--but it wasn't getting any closer, either.

The board came away with a harsh crack, and afternoon sun slanted in. 

Just off this room was something that might've originally been a study, with a set of French doors nailed shut all the way around. The wood strips in the door were wide and gleaming; the glass panes between them were smaller than usual. It was decorative, fussy, and not to Eugene's taste. 

Behind the door, flapping itself erratically against the glass, was a zombie.

Eugene clenched his hands on the broom, riding out the surge as his muscles contracted. He'd seen worse, he was sorry to say. Judged with a clear head--as clear as he could keep it, though his breathing and heartbeat had sped up as they always did--this zom didn't look like much. It was small, gaunt, and ragged, with most of its right arm missing and a stump instead of a left hand. Who knew how long it had been instinctively bumping into those doors, spasmodic and flopping, unable even to crack the glass. 

Jack shouldered up next to him, bat ready. Yeah, Eugene told himself, trying to ease his fists a little, licking his dry lips, he'd seen worse. 

Until he looked a little longer. 

The first thing he noticed was the shirt, its threadbare remains still draped over the zom's rotting chest. FL MIRAT , it said, in dingy white on faded red. The red hem fell low, almost down to the creature's knees. The white short sleeves were stained through, gone yellow and brown with foul fluids he didn't even want to think about. 

The next thing he noticed was the rest of the room, as hard as it was to ever look away from a moving zom. It had been done over as a little bedroom, with a brass bedstead. On the nightstand by the bed were a clutter of knocked over bottles--cough medicine, pain medicine. Posters dangled in shreds on the wall. An old portable TV, Xbox games scattered across the floor. Running shoes, school shoes, laundry in a heap. A dirty soccer ball wedged partway under the bed. And at the head of the bed...

"Where are they," Jack said quietly. Eugene wanted to ask what he meant, but with every second the answer forced itself on him, as much as he wanted to keep it away. He just shook his head. 

"Where are they?" Jack's voice was rising. "Where did they go?" 

The zom dashed itself weakly against the glass, scrabbling with its remaining stump. Eugene looked at it again, at that shirt, though the remains of the slogan went blurry now as his eyes welled up with hot, hopeless tears. FLY EMIRATES, the red shirt had said. An Arsenal team shirt, and it was too big, probably for sleeping in, probably belonged to...

"HOW COULD THEY LEAVE HIM LIKE THIS!" Jack roared, and Eugene dodged to the side as Jack spun and brought the bat down in a mighty crash against the wall. Then a sideways swipe into a mirror hanging by the front door, and glass shards exploded in a burst of silver. Eugene ducked and covered his head--first against the spray of glass, but then he just stayed there, crouched down, his head wrapped in his arms. Tears choked him. He saw the Arsenal shirt behind his eyes. He saw the head of the brass bed, with some kind of bright nylon cord tied there that had been lashed to both wrists. The wrists were still there, with their hands. Torn and splintered off, given enough time, enough rocking and pulling, maybe even gnawing... 

He could hear Jack smashing into the walls, overturning furniture, crunching the broken mirror underfoot. There were no more recognizable words, only screams. The hoarseness rose in Jack's voice again, taking Eugene back in time. Here inside his own arms Eugene breathed hard through an open mouth, tasting mud.

His head was full, stuffed thick with sound. Every noise he had heard throughout the entire rising... the coughs, the rattles, the faint wet moans; arguments, curses, lost cries of rage and despair. Quiet sobbing behind muffling hands, worse than any shout. Someone choking on his name. He sank in it, drowning, down toward that quiet he'd almost reached yesterday.

Yesterday...before Jack had come, lost in his own maelstrom, the current almost sweeping him past. Such a fragile lifeline they'd tied between them. But it had worked for a day and a night.

Jack's voice was sliding into a gravelly howl, fading like he was plummeting from a great height, falling away. Eugene took a breath, long and deep, inflating his chest and his belly as hard as he could. Then with one quick effort, he unwrapped his arms, grabbed the broom, and pushed up out of his crouch.

The French doors still stood, solid and nailed all around. The zom behind them pushed itself uselessly against the glass, chewing sluggishly on air. Jack had bashed holes all over the plaster walls, upended the sofa and armchairs, snapped the legs off a little end table. A strew of pencils and pens had been ground into the floor in thick blotches of graphite and ink.

Jack, keening in his voiceless throat, was chopping and stabbing jerkily at at a pile of framed photos. Eugene didn't look at the photos, didn't even try to make them out. He already knew what he'd see. 

"Jack," he said. 

Jack put his back into another swing, and one of the frames flew across the room and cracked hard into the front door, gouging the wood. 

Eugene planted his feet and took another deep breath. "Jack." It came out strong and definitive this time. The bat's next swing hitched and hesitated before coming down with a crunch on some picture glass.

"Jack, listen." W.G. dinged into the biggest metal frame, bending it. "Listen..." Still nothing. The frame came apart under the bat's ferocious blows. Eugene watched him for a minute, in that filthy shirt, eyes reddened and wet and empty, gone somewhere he couldn't follow.

"Come on," he said, firm and matter-of-fact. "Don't...don't make me get the hand puppet out."

The bat, high over Jack's head in a full-body backswing, paused. It lowered at last, very slowly, and Jack just stood there with his head hanging down.

"Good," Eugene said. "Easy, now. It's time to come back. Okay?"

No movement, not from Jack or W.G. Eugene stepped closer, leaning the broom against an upside-down armchair. "Come on back. You can help me. They..." He swallowed. "They left him like this, but we don't have to. We can take care of him."

Jack looked up sharply, his eyes so wide that the bloodshot white showed all around the iris, his mouth hanging open as he panted for breath like a dying dog. He was raked open, flayed, barely staying upright against pressures and memories Eugene could (he was sorry to say) imagine. 

"You can come back," Eugene said. 

"Why." Jack's stare didn't quite seem focused, as if he were staring right through Eugene's forehead into his thoughts--a place Eugene wouldn't wish on anyone, but Jack most especially. "Why should I. What _is_ there? Huh? All there is is more of _this_!" He swung the bat out to point at the French doors and their softly thumping prisoner. 

"There's tonight," Eugene said, looking as best he could into the hollow eyes, trying to catch their true focus. "We can have our soup. That pillow must be dry by now; you can try it out first if you want."

Jack's brows were lowering. Eugene went on: "There's more of the book, too. You haven't even heard the storming of the Bastille. And Sydney Carton! You can't--I mean, you have to meet Sydney."

"I have to meet Sydney," Jack repeated, huskily.

"Well...yeah. I mean I..." Eugene swallowed and raised his hands; it was a shrug at first, but his hands kept moving, coming to rest palm-up in front of Jack. 

They looked at each other. At first it was just Eugene looking at Jack, but slowly, with effort, Jack's eyes cleared and met his directly. He unclenched one of his fists from W.G. and reached out to clasp Eugene's hand. His fingers were cold and stiff.

Eugene gave a tug, trying to pull Jack in, feeling something clench hard in his chest--but Jack only shuffled forward an awkward half-step and stopped, his body language a medley of shock and bristles and Do Not Hug. So Eugene eased off as naturally as he could and just wrapped Jack's cold hand in both of his.

"S'okay," Eugene said. "Okay, now. Shh-shh." Jack breathed in gasps and held on to him, and he patted Jack's hand, murmuring and hushing--not to quiet him, but to block out that other sound for just a minute if he could, that moth against the light.

* * *

They fought well in concert, when it finally came to it: Eugene's broom was useful enough for decoying and herding, to get into the perfect position for Jack and W.G. to bring down a sudden, final coup de grace. They closed up the French doors, but didn't replace the nails. Jack had found and lowered a set of Venetian blinds on the inside of the doors, and now the little room stood quiet and blank, a cool white tomb.

Eugene warmed the soup in an enamelled saucepan from the kitchen, over a little fire of photographs and a few other small burnables they had scrounged. There weren't any books in the house...he figured they must have already gone for fuel.

"Well?" Jack said, pouring the last splash of soup into Jack’s bowl. They were at the dining table like civilized men, with the afternoon sun through the one hole in the window boards as their glowing chandelier.

Eugene drank straight from the bowl, savoring the salty flavor. "Thanks."

" _Well_?" Jack said again.

"Well--what?"

"Is it time for Sydney?"

Eugene pulled the book from his back pocket, hesitantly. "Are you sure?"

"Course I'm sure! I've never read the bloody thing, have I."

"No, I mean..." He flexed the book between his hands. "You want to stay? Here?"

Jack pushed his chair back. "I was thinking the upstairs bedroom. Two honest-to-God sheets left in there, it'll be like we died and went to heaven."

Eugene heard the forced lightness in Jack's voice and the tight control underneath. Everything about him insisted he was fine, but at a high, taut pitch that was hard to miss. Eugene answered mildly: "Two sheets and you're in heaven? That's what I call a cheap date." Jack snorted and laughed, as he'd hoped, even if it still did sound a little hysterical. 

They battened down the perimeter of the house and readied for their early afternoon bedtime, trading half-baked innuendo all the while. Without open discussion of it, they both put a lot of effort into getting scrubbed up--leftover rainwater in an ornamental garden pool helped, and Eugene's scalp felt better than it had in a long time. His face, too, which he shaved clean with a disposable razor. Jack made noises about cultivating a grand set of Victorian sidewhiskers, but in the end he shaved as well, claiming peer pressure. Their clothes got a good wash and wring, and ended up draped damply over furniture throughout the master bedroom.

Eugene slipped naked between the sheets before Jack could turn around from carefully adjusting the Floyd shirt over a useless lamp. He settled down on his pillow, pretending he wasn't looking while Jack padded over and got into bed. He had to pretend extra hard that he didn't see the delicate groove between the muscle of Jack's lower abdomen and the pale crease of his hips.

The sheets lay so soft along Eugene's body, warming quickly. His skin tingled, bare and clean. "Oh," he sighed, unable to help it. "It really is."

"Hm?" Jack plumped his bed pillow and perched the velveteen pillow atop it, making a marshmallowy pile.

"Heaven." Eugene heard how his voice sounded, and he quickly busied himself with the book. "Okay, um... Ready?"

"Bring on the Sydney!" Jack settled in on his side, sheet up to his waist. 

"Well, no Sydney _quite_ yet...” 

"What!"

"First there are Monsieur and Madame Defarge."

"You monster."

"They're important, you'll like them. Or...okay, 'like' might not be the right word. But her especially, she's creepy."

"I think you made Sydney up," Jack grumbled into his pillow.

" _Chapter five_ ," Eugene said loudly. "The Wine Shop."

Jack made a complaining moo from inside his pillow, and Eugene smiled and kept reading. 

He was only a few paragraphs in, though, when he lost the smile and couldn't seem to get it back. The wine-cask broke, the starving people scrambled to drink...but now there was something distinctly uncomfortable and familiar about the red stains everywhere, on their hands and feet and hungry mouths, and painted into words on the wall. Jack's face slowly took on a drawn, haunted look. And while Eugene made his way through the "narrow winding streets diverging, all peopled by rags and nightcaps, and all smelling of rags and nightcaps," Jack shifted beneath the sheet, curling in on himself. One of his feet brushed Eugene's and withdrew with a jerk. 

"Sorry," Eugene said, tucking his feet well back. It took him a moment to find his place again. Jack's skin had felt so cold. And he wondered if the rags and nightcaps had reminded Jack of that stained, tattered Arsenal shirt too. 

During the next paragraph, he kept sneaking glances at Jack, who had his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes distant. Eugene wished he'd escaped the village with some other book. Heroic nonfiction about mountain climbing, maybe, or punching sharks in the eye. An overdone romance novel with codpieces. Jane Austen, where you knew there was a firm, calm hand on the tiller and everything would be all right in the end.

Instead, he introduced Jack to Madame Defarge, and led him into the revelation of the traumatized man in the attic. The dim garret in the book kept threatening to overtake this little bedroom with its single block of slanting sun through broken boards. And as he described the worn, gaunt, faded figure of Doctor Manette, Jack shifted, and his icy foot touched Eugene's again for a few moments before flinching away.

Eugene was about to say an automatic _sorry_ , but swallowed it. His eyes stayed on the page, although he was increasingly aware of Jack's miserable curled form across the bed. Even aside from the glimpses he certainly hadn't caught on purpose, Eugene wanted more than anything to grab him and hold on, even if it was just for tonight, the two of them marooned together on an island of sheets in a strange and monstrous sea. But you didn't go grabbing at men who were so set on keeping their distance; nothing good ever came of it.

Two more passing touches of Jack's feet later--never getting any warmer, either, despite their cozy nest--Eugene was teetering on the edge of breaking his own rule. And stealing glances between paragraphs showed him a Jack who hadn't unwound one bit, despite the food and the book and the bed. Eugene knew he was listening; but even if he was seeing the images that Eugene read to him, the despairing little garret room and the shoemaker's tools, that wasn't all he saw. 

Eugene tucked a finger between the pages. "Hey," he said, and waited until Jack (too slow, dazed and distant) finally looked directly at him. "You okay?" 

"Yeah," Jack said. "Brilliant."

He took that at face value for another page. Until, that is, the next time Jack moved toward him as if by accident, this time his lower leg lying against Eugene's for a few long seconds before the inevitable retreat. There was a chilly tension knotting Jack's calf muscle as hard as a Charley horse.

"Jack," he said lightly, peeking over the book. 

"Brilliant," Jack replied automatically.

"No, I mean...Maybe we should stop. I know it's not everybody's cup of tea. Especially, uh...after a day like today."

Jack frowned, pulling the sheet up over his shoulder. "Nah, s'fine."

"It's just..." Eugene shrugged. "It seems like it's getting to you."

"What!" Jack said, his eyes wide and affronted, trying for surprise. "What're you even-- Look, I'm fine, go ahead."

"Okay. But--"

"Prove you didn't make Sydney up," Jack put in, his smile strained.

Eugene riffled the pages. "You'll eat those words," he said fondly. Then he leaned in a bit, meeting Jack's eyes. "But it's okay, you know that. It's okay if it got to you."

Jack revolved his forefinger rapidly, as if cranking up a propeller.

"All right, all right," Eugene said with a sigh. "But I--" 

"'Ey." Jack's voice was a little too loud for the close quarters. "Can we just..."

Eugene waited, but there was nothing else. "Just?"

"Not."

It was an option, and Eugene really did consider it. On an ordinary day, he'd definitely have ended up letting it go, burying his nose in the book and pretending he didn't notice Jack chewing his own nerves to shreds. He wondered if there'd ever be an ordinary day again. But if the Grey Plague had brought even a glimmer of good anywhere in its wake, it was the increasing ability to just say Fuck It to all that. 

So...yeah. All that? Fuck it.

"Sorry," he said, very gently, and not very sorry at all. "But you're kind of stuck with me. At least until your clothes dry. So now might be a good time to talk." 

Jack didn't return his smile; he looked petrified. 

"On the road to the village," Eugene said. "Before you, uh...got me out from under my hedge. Where were you coming from? Do you remem--"

"No."

"Nothing at all?"

Jack stared at him, eyes flat and bright. "Can't." His jaw was knotted tight, the word barely escaping.

"Okay." Eugene could understand that; his final few days before Jack had showed up had a pretty thick fog over them too. "If you think back to--"

" _Can't_." The muscles at the points of his jaw trembled as if his teeth were grinding together. Eugene made himself wait, let the silence breathe, until Jack finally muttered, "It's a bad idea."

"Why?"

Jack closed his eyes. "You saw me. Down there. And on the road."

Eugene nodded, but Jack's eyes were still shut tight. So he said quietly, "I saw."

"You think I want to go-- to be like that? Eh?" Jack shook his head like a wet dog. His eyes opened, damp and red, and he stared fiercely over Eugene's shoulder. "It doesn't take much. Things get a little rough, off goes Jack! And maybe next time I won't be able to--" His words choked off, and he swallowed. "So. Let's just..."

Eugene considered him. "Is that what you think."

Jack managed to move his glare to Eugene's face, but it obviously took all his effort.

"Jack." One corner of Eugene's mouth curled upward, and he tilted his head. "You think I'd let that happen?"

Jack breathed in harshly, as if to argue, but hesitated.

_Fuck it_ , Eugene thought again. He slid the book under his pillow, then slowly reached out and took one of Jack's hands into both of his, as he had before. Jack's hand was nearly as cold as his feet, all the muscles stiff and strained. "You won't," Eugene said calmly. "You won't be like that anymore. Not for long. I won't let you."

"Yeah?" Jack made a scoffing sound, but his hand lay still in Eugene's gentle clasp. 

"Yeah. I mean...I did get you back. Didn't I."

He left that without much of a question on the end, and let his gaze drop. Gradually, as he held and warmed that cold hand, Jack's fingers eased and interlaced with his.

It felt like a long, motionless time, just their breathing and the slight shift of the dusty sun through the boards. And then Jack murmured against the pillow, "Yeah."

This time, when Eugene tugged at his hand, Jack moved over easily--even hurriedly--against him, ducking his head into the curve of Eugene's neck. Eugene embraced him carefully, mindful to keep their pelvises from touching, like a gentleman. But Jack kept moving past that invisible boundary, wriggling closer into Eugene's arms until they were plastered together all down their length. His body felt chilly and strung out tight, and Eugene rubbed a long warm path up and down the knobs of his spine.

"You got me back too," Eugene whispered. "Thank you."

Jack made a little noise against Eugene's neck that might've been another scoff. Eugene pinched him--on the hip, despite the tempting proximity of his ass--and Jack yelped.

"You did!" Eugene said.

"If you say so."

"I do say so." He captured one of Jack's calves with his legs. "God, you're like ice."

Jack pressed his feet onto Eugene's. "Another reason to keep you round."

Eugene made discontented sounds, but held him. Jack gave a long theatrical sigh, tickling his throat.

"Hm?"

"Ice," said Jack. "Miss it already."

"Isn't that my line? Thought you British weren't into ice cubes."

"Iced coffee," Jack said wistfully.

"Oh, I see."

"Ice _cream_..." 

"A tragedy," Eugene said, patting his back. They were quiet for a while. 

"It is, though," Jack muttered at last. 

"I know." Eugene stroked Jack's hair. "Can you believe I used to think the apocalypse might be kind of fun?"

Jack squeezed him tighter for a second--really hard, almost stealing his breath. Then he broke away and leaned back. "You trying to tell me I'm no fun anymore?"

Eugene smiled. "Well..."

"We make our own fun, don't we!" Jack's return smile looked genuine for a change. "I mean...you with your Dickens, very flash that, and me with my...uh..."

"Your...?" Eugene prompted.

"Gimme a minute."

"Yeah, we're a real barrel of laughs."

"C'mon, then," Jack growled, his eyes bright. "I'll show you a bit of fun."

In the ensuing wrestling match, Eugene ended up on top, surprised and winded. He touched his nose to Jack's, crossed his eyes. "At least your feet are a little warmer now."

Jack craned up and kissed him, giving his lower lip a mock-bite.

_So much for keeping his distance_ , Eugene thought, a little giddy. He broke the kiss long enough to say, "Okay, warmer might be an understatement--" but Jack kissed him again with a fierce noise and that was the end of that.

Except perhaps for the thought that the apocalypse unfortunately did not come well-stocked with condoms. He hadn't realized how strange it would be, after a lifetime of habit--just another reminder, even here in Jack's arms, of all that had been lost. But they both made do, and they were both better than warm. Charles Dickens and one of the pillows ended up on the floor; W.G. kept watch from his spot against the wall.

* * *

Some sun still shone through the boards, dust swirling in the golden light of early evening. They lay on their backs, sweaty, shoulders pressed together. The room felt close and muggy; a definite downside to the modern Boarded Window design style was a distinct lack of fresh air.

"First watch," Jack said. He hadn't said anything very intelligible since "a bit of fun", if you didn't count one-word encouragements.

"I should argue with you." Eugene yawned. "Find the book--there's still enough light to read by, if you want to get ahead a little. But _don't peek at the end_."

Jack didn't respond. Eugene looked over and found him grave and shuttered; he seemed very far away, despite the bleary kiss-swollen look to his mouth and the warmth radiating from his lax muscles.

"Or--you can, if you want," Eugene said. 

"Nah." Jack managed a smile. "S'your job. Something to...look forward to for tomorrow."

"Yeah," Eugene said. "Tomorrow."

Jack leaned out to grab W.G.'s handle, and Eugene fell asleep to the sight of Jack sitting up against the headboard, revolving the bat in his hands, waiting, listening.

* * *

He woke abruptly to full darkness, and held his breath for a second until he could distinguish the faint sound of Jack next to him through the silence hissing in his ears. He never thought he'd miss the late-night rumble of traffic or the shouts of drunken scuffles after the bars had closed.

"Second watch," he said toward Jack. He was prepared for Jack to have dozed off, actually--it wasn't like they were in a vulnerable spot, nor a zom-heavy one, and who could resist a bed with pillows anyway. 

But Jack responded at once, his voice subdued. "Bad dreams?"

"...No? Not that I remember. Why?"

"Sounded bad."

"Uh. Sorry." Eugene struggled up to a sitting position and groped over the edge of the bed until he found his broom. Ridiculous thing. He'd trade it in at first light; there had to be something else around. "Your turn. Not--not for bad dreams, I mean."

Jack was quiet, and Eugene settled against the headboard and listened. Surely any zom would have to make a racket, getting inside and up here. They weren't what you might call physically deft. 

The stairs made his imaginings a little worse, though, somehow. Possibly an aftereffect of too many childhood scare-stories involving stairs, gleefully narrating each thump and bump as the monster mounted to get you. 

"Cut it out," he whispered, trying to force his brain onto a new subject.

"What," Jack said, and from the sound Eugene could tell he was still sitting up.

"Nothing. Get some sleep."

But Jack didn't move. "Maybe I should take second watch too."

"You'll get your turn."

"It's just that I'm not very sleepy."

"Why not?" Eugene smiled a little in tingly reminiscence. "It's not like you haven't had any exercise."

"I know," said Jack--and his voice was hushed and troubled. Oh, God, he wasn't picking up on the innuendo at all, but on their earlier bit of exercise downstairs. _Way to help with those bad memories, there, 'Gene._

"Get your head down, at least. Rest your...ears, I guess, it's too dark for eyes."

"I was thinking," Jack said. "Doing a little remembering." 

"Yeah?" Eugene wished like hell he could see him. 

"Thinking about what happened to my sister."

Eugene laid the broom down and reached out carefully in the utter blankness until his fingers bumped into Jack's shoulder. He held on.

Jack told him the story, speaking in flat, measured phrases. Little details stood out, tiny commonplace moments, too bright, too sharp, like pinpoint explosions of a flashbulb. Eugene kept breathing deep, in and out, following in Jack's wake, trying to be there with him.

But when Jack's words grew heavy and thick, forced out through a closing throat, Eugene tried to pull him in and Jack resisted.

"Come on," Eugene said gently. "Come here." He slid his hand around the back of Jack's neck and tugged again, resting his forehead against Jack's temple.

Jack cleared his throat a few times and finally said, "I'm okay. I, uh--" He cleared his throat again; his voice was choked and strained. "I have to keep on watch."

"Sure." He eased back a bit, holding Jack lightly. Jack's breathing was harsh and wet, and a careful brush of Eugene's lips across Jack's cheekbone revealed a steady, hot overflow of tears. He thought maybe Jack would let up at some point, relent and allow him in, but it didn't happen--he stayed rigidly away, much as he had earlier. Before. Eugene had hoped maybe lovemaking had changed that; he thought wistfully of the lost softness in Jack's body, melting into his, Jack’s eager hands on him, a sheerly wicked smile.

Now, though, all he could do was just sit with Jack, and listen, and wait for dawn.

* * *

When they set out, the fledgling morning was pale and cool and still, and they were quiet and polite with each other. It was unclear precisely when the midnight stalemate had turned into morning-after awkwardness, but it seemed to have come sometime around the first grey hint of dawn. It wasn't fair that mornings could still do that to people, Eugene thought. When he'd used to joke around about the zombie apocalypse, "awkward" was not a word that had leapt to mind. 

Eugene felt an actual physical pang (he thought it wasn't all hunger, anyway) at their isolation. This was the point where he'd have been on the phone or at breakfast with friends, telling them about this guy from last night, worrying over small signals, planning to text him after just enough time had gone by. But instead, here he was, plodding along the road with no sign of friends, phone, or breakfast, let alone the conspiratorial gossip that had always been his favorite cure for hangovers or loneliness. 

At least there were more buildings now, and while that meant more paranoia, it also meant more promise. Soon there'd be people, Eugene was sure. Live people. He hoped. 

"Ssst." Jack stopped and pointed W.G. down a lane.

"What?" Eugene braced himself, broom in one hand and frying pan in the other--he'd taken the sturdiest one from the cottage, to give it a trial as a backup weapon. And it would come in handy should they ever find any bacon...if there were any left this side of heaven.

"Shop," Jack said.

Eugene squinted along W.G.'s path and saw the distant sign. "Let's go."

The front door and display window had already been cracked and splintered open, despite the security bars. Weapons at the ready, they edged inside, into a tremendous stink. There was rotten food, for one thing, including the moldy remains of an ice-cream freezer.

But also, following a splotch on the wall and a worsening of the smell, Eugene peered gingerly over the counter and saw a dead body--regular style, no reanimation. The long-dried signs of blood spray on wall and floor suggested he might have been shot. The register was open and empty.

"Who would bother to steal money at the end of the world," he said, turning away. He remembered a time when he wouldn't have been able to look in the first place.

"Hope he chokes on it," Jack said, prowling cautiously through the aisles. 

On a bottom shelf, pushed to the back and gone unnoticed, were some undamaged cans of sardines and pilchards. Eugene scooped them into his bag and popped up, arms and weapons splayed wide in victory.

Jack rose from the other side of the shelves, beaming. "Brown sauce!" He tossed a little plastic bottle toward Eugene, and Eugene scrambled to catch it in the bag. There followed a few other condiments, plus a lopsided package of tea bags. They grinned at each other over the shelf, and the early morning's awkwardness definitely fell a few notches in Eugene's mental checklist.

Eugene gestured toward the freezer cabinet. "I'm just sorry there isn't any ice cr--" he began, but was cut off by a sudden explosive crack outside that made him reflexively duck and hunch his shoulders.

"You think that's a, a--" Jack said.

"Gunshot?"

"Yeah--never heard one in person."

"Me neither."

They crept to the doorway and peered out, then around. The lane and its buildings were quiet, a still life bathed in delicate mid-morning sunshine...for about thirty seconds, and then a walking zom, pigeon-toed feet scraping unevenly along the asphalt, tottered into view down where the lane crossed a larger road.

It was heading somewhere in particular, Eugene could tell. When they were after something, they locked on and kept coming; without a goal, they didn't really travel, they kind of staggered around in random, wobbly directions.

Without any discussion, he and Jack headed quickly down the lane to the corner. Around to the left, in the direction the walker was going, were the backs of five or six more, all bumping and shuffling around the base of a layered stone plinth with a column or something on it. And up atop the plinth, his feet not all that far above their heads, was a man. A real live man, emphasis on "live".

He stood awkwardly on the narrow edge of the top layer with one arm gripping the column, his head bent, other hand fumbling with something gripped between his knees. Then he straightened and raised the object, pointing it down into his pursuers. He seemed to hold it there for a long time, and Eugene, keeping a nervous eye on their surroundings, had time to notice a couple more walkers crossing the road in the distance. They weren't heading for the plinth, angling away from it in fact, and he wondered where they--

CRACK! The shot came, loud and flat as two pieces of wood smacking together. He looked back to the base of the plinth just in time to see a zom finish crumpling right in place. The one behind it walked onto and over it, swaying as if it were on the deck of a ship.

Eugene let out a quiet breath. It certainly didn't take as much work as the blunt objects did, that was for sure. If only he--

"Did you see that," Jack said in a hushed voice.

"Dirty Harry two-point-oh," Eugene answered wonderingly.

"No-- _that_ ," said Jack, and pointed down the road, where the two zoms who had been heading away were now turning, clumsy but definite, to lurch back toward the plinth.

Eugene had read a study online once that said swearing really could make you feel better, but he couldn't think of the best words to use here. So instead, he waved the broom--tentatively at first, then with more vigor. The pistol jerked in their direction, and Eugene raised the broom and the pan up high and held still, _don't shoot, my housewares surrender_. 

After a moment of startled hesitation, the man raised one hand up toward them, showing four fingers. Then he aimed the pistol down into the zoms again. Eugene started shaking his head, trying to amplify his warning by semaphoring the broom side-to-side, but-- _crack_ , another zom fell.

"Back there," Jack said desperately, nudging Eugene, who looked behind them to see a bald zom with one arm and a dented face sidle itself round the corner and head for the plinth. Which meant, right for them.

He slipped the heavy canvas bag off his shoulder and cast it aside, while Jack took a step away to make room for brandishing W.G. They paced toward the thing.

It had been dragging one of its legs pretty heavily, Eugene noticed, to the point where it had rubbed through shoe, sock, and most of the grey flesh of the foot. Bones protruded through leathery dead skin like the gnarled stems of a terrible underground plant. The middle of its face was mostly an open wound, leaving only crooked, bulgy eyes and the remains of a straggling beard.

A long breath pushed from it as it got closer, passing over dead vocal cords to make a thick, sludgy noise. Eugene's skin was prickling all over, jumping and itching like random electrical storms. And at last he couldn't stand it anymore, the noise and the slow motion and the scritch of bones against the road. He didn't wait for W.G.'s longer reach, he just darted in, jabbing a feint with the broom, and when the creature turned to snap at the broomstick, he swung the frying pan into the side of its head with all his force.

_BLANNNNNNG_

The sound of pan against skull was like a church bell smashed flat in the mouth of a giant, tinny and jagged, reverberating it seemed for miles. His arm went white-numb for a second at the force traveling up it, and he only barely managed to hang on to the pan; the creature took a few more steps with its head hanging sideways, then pitched onto the ground, skull fragments spinning out around it like a brittle old china plate.

"Okaaaay," Eugene said, wincing. "Guess that's a no on the pan then."

"Have you considered trying an air horn?" Jack asked, his voice both frustrated and somehow on the edge of laughing. 

Another gunshot, and they spun to look at the plinth again.

"Brace yourself," Eugene said, and over Jack's wordless complaint he raised his voice and waved the broom. "Excuse me!"

The gunman waved back with the pistol, and called in a deep, smoothly-accented voice, "Two rounds left!"

Rounds. Yes, right, bullets, very Splinter Cell. "Yeah, hi-- If you'd-- uh, wait, wait, stop!" 

The man paused. "What!"

"The sound, the noise," Eugene said desperately. "It calls them!"

"What's that you're using, then," the man replied, "a feather duster?" 

Jack snickered. 

"Yeah, sorry, it was--" Eugene edged backward as one of the zoms crowded round the plinth seemed to catch on to his voice and started to laboriously heave itself in his direction. "Let's turn down the volume a bit, okay? Jack and I can clear these ones ourselves without drawing any more."

"Oh, sure," Jack said dubiously under his breath.

But their new friend cooperatively held off long enough for them to knock down the milling zoms, starting with the one who'd noticed Eugene and put itself just far enough ahead of the group to ask for a broomhandle in the eye socket.

Jack batted away beside him like a professional, his back muscles bunching and relaxing under the Floyd shirt. Eugene dodged in and out, herding the creatures, keeping them from making any moves to encircle. He still held the pan in one hand and used it for blocking, but no more strikes. He guessed he'd just have to save it for some future bacon-discovery day after all.

The last zom fell under a short, aggressive hook shot from W.G., and the gunman whistled through his teeth as he leapt gracefully down from the plinth, pistol in his belt.

"A real batsman!" he said, shaking Jack's hand heartily. "Craig Bullington."

"Jack Holden." Jack tapped W.G. against his foot.

"Eugene Woods." He shook with Craig, feeling slightly surreal, as if it were the start of the world's strangest business lunch. Craig looked like a businessman, too--not the tired-mousy-pale kind, but the other kind Eugene ran into in the course of writing his articles, getting interviews, meeting the young wealthy denizens of financial districts worldwide--a big, handsome, well-dressed and athletic guy, his clothes so unshowily perfect that they had to be expensive. 

"Domestic type, are you?" Craig asked with a smile. His teeth were very white. 

"Well, I-- Uh." Eugene's face felt warm. "Sorry, I don't--"

"The broom," Craig said patiently. "Or does it fly, like Harry Potter?" 

"Oh. Right, sure." Eugene smiled back at him uncertainly. "I wish it did."

"Shame. But at least we've got a cricketer!" Craig clapped Jack on the shoulder.

"And a sheriff, looks like," said Jack with an answering grin. "What is it, black ops? If you tell me you'll have to kill me?"

Craig threw a mock-punch at Jack, and as Jack playfully parried it, Craig raised his other hand, forefinger and thumb in pistol shape. "No, I'm a target shooter," he said, and shot Jack right through the forehead, making the sound effects with his mouth. "Good thing too, wouldn't you say?"

"I'd say now you're out of, uh, rounds, you'll have to use it for stirring your tea," Eugene said, turning to retrieve the canvas bag.

"No, no." Craig patted the butt of the gun. "I've got more. Those things just got between me and my kit, that's all. Come on." He strode away from the pile of zoms, and Jack followed. Eugene wedged the pan into the bag, hoisted the bag onto his shoulder, gripped his sadly non-flying broom, and trotted after them.

* * *

Craig told them some stories of his life in London, both before the Grey Plague and after, and it confirmed their suspicion that it'd be a good idea to skirt the majority of the city as best they could while still keeping close enough to stay sheltered and supplied on their way north.

He also chatted about cricket and soccer, mostly with Jack. Eugene nodded when an observation was addressed to the group at large, and otherwise stayed alert for trouble; he was more of a hockey fancier, anyway.

A couple hours along, they approached a new building with a freshly painted sign proclaiming it a Garden Centre, flats of wilted plants and flowers displayed on stands out front. Eugene perked up a little, indulging in dreams of a rake, or maybe even a good sharp spade. He tried not to feel anything at the sight of the cheerful, bright "GRAND OPENING" banner hanging optimistically above the doors.

Pistol drawn--and this time with his bedroll and kit bag, including the rest of the ammunition, strapped across his back--Craig led the way in. He had a flashlight in his other hand, playing it across the dim aisles.

"Okay," he said firmly. "Our goals are tools, batteries, water. Food if you can find any--sometimes they have things over near the barbeques. Or canned pet food, cat or dog, those are safe to eat. Jack, keep to my right so the bat swings clear. Eugene, make sure not to cross into the firing zone. Let's go."

Eugene wondered when he'd stop feeling silly at moments like this, as if it were all a hidden-camera prank. But he brandished his weapon, such as it was, and they proceeded into enemy territory.

A few aisles along, they had scavenged some unopened packages of chips and other snacks, two jugs of distilled water, and a toasting fork. Eugene tucked it in his bag, but idly considered its merits as a weapon for later. The handle wasn't very long, but you could--

_Urrrrhhhhnnnnng_ said the zom that wobbled out from around the corner on Eugene's side, practically cooing it into his ear. Eugene yelled without meaning to and scrabbled backward, dropping the canvas bag. The zom swiped one slow, clenched hand at the air where he'd been; there were a fine silver watch and band embedded in the rotten flesh of its wrist. 

_Who even wears a watch anymore?_ Eugene thought, poking out hastily with the broomstick. Someone was shouting, but he couldn't really hear, he was too busy and couldn't figure out if that style of watch was marketed for men or for women. He shoved the broomstick hard against the notch in the creature's prominent collarbone, digging his heels in and pressing forward to try and pin it against a shelf. He knew showy executives still wore big Rolexes these days, he read the ads in the in-flight magazines, but this one was--

"-- _out you idiot_!" came the shouting again, a deep voice right in his ear now, and someone yanked his collar backward. He tripped and landed hard, and there were explosions, one, two. The zom pitched flat forward and splayed out, the left hand flapping across Eugene's shoe. The watch was an analog. It ticked silently round.

Craig kept a sharp lookout, aiming the pistol at shadow after shadow while Jack helped Eugene up and Eugene slung the bag over his shoulder. Then they got back into formation, Craig pressed Eugene backward a couple of steps with his arm, and they started patrolling again in silence.

Eugene did find a good selection of garden spades, and selected the biggest and sharpest there was. But he kept the broom, handle tucked through the bag strap, just in case.

* * *

"Is he asleep?" Craig's voice was a low, placid rumble; combined with the crackle of the little campfire, it was almost restful.

"Yeah," Jack said. "I don't think he's feeling very well. Cheese and onion crisps might not sit nicely with canned pilchards...at least not without a buttered roll."

Eugene in fact wasn't feeling particularly well, though he thought sleepily that the cheese and onion flavouring was perhaps the least of his problems. However, having been reminded, now his thoughts couldn't help but drift to the pleasures of a nice, fresh bite of lettuce. He couldn't imagine when he'd have some again. He didn't know much about gardening, spade notwithstanding. _Should've picked up some seeds_ , he thought, and chased away images of that ticking watch.

"It's a banquet, compared to what will happen later," Craig said.

"I suppose," Jack sighed. "Yeah, once the ready-made stuff is gone. I don't like to think about it."

"You should, though. You have to."

There was a long silence, the sound of the fire being stirred and crackling up.

"We have to be practical," Craig finally said.

"Kind of goes without saying, doesn't it?" Jack answered, and it sounded like he was smiling a little. Eugene imagined it as his wry smile, the small one that quirked up more on one side. He turned his face slightly into the velveteen pillow--it was his turn--and breathed in, trying to catch the scent of Jack's hair.

"It's just that we can't waste food anymore."

"'Spose not. Now I feel bad for every plate of broccoli I didn't finish. My mum would--"

"I mean," Craig interrupted gently, "food should go to those who earn it. Earn their keep one hundred percent. We can't afford mistakes. We can't afford to...carry anyone."

That peaceful cello of a voice almost slipped the import of the message right through. But in the long pause afterward, Eugene's half-dozing mind had time to circle back and think it over. A sick coldness crept up the back of his neck, prickled in his hair. Before he could decide what to do, or whether there were even anything he _could_ do, Jack spoke.

"Yeah, mate, I know what you mean."

"Then you know what has to be done," Craig said, and he really did sound regretful.

"Oh yeah." There were small noises of movement. "Here, let me borrow that thing, will you?"

"I don't know if we need to be drastic. We could just pack up and go."

"No, no, you were right, something has to be done,” Jack said. “Here, just for a minute." 

Footsteps approached. Eugene let out a long breath and kept his eyes closed, settling in to his final bed in the dirt. He couldn't figure out what the far, far better thing he'd done could be, if he had to pick one. But it was too late now. And at least it wasn't raining on him here, and he had a pillow. 

Jack said, from right above him, his voice still quiet, "Here's what we're doing, yeah? You're going to sit...right...there. Don't move." A noise by Eugene's ear; Jack kneeling down. "Eugene? Wake up, it's time to go."

Eugene gulped a new breath of air but couldn't seem to force his eyes open.

"Put that down, you'll hurt yourself," Craig said. He sounded reasonable and calm. "Or him. And I guess you don't want that."

"No," said Jack.

"Holden...Woods. He's not your brother. And he's no fighter. Are you suicidal or something?"

Jack gave a small laugh, a warm and knowing one that almost felt like a physical touch on the back of Eugene's neck. "He’s saved my life more times than you ever could, even with this."

"Oh yes?" Less reasonable now, the frustration bleeding through. "And how's that?"

Now Jack really did touch him. He slipped his hand into Eugene's hair and tenderly carded through, then stroked Eugene's temple, then his cheek. Eugene opened his eyes.

"Words," Jack said. "Words." 

Eugene pushed himself upright.

"Let's get on the road, love," Jack said without looking away from Craig, who sat stiffly at gunpoint across the fire, all injured dignity. 

They gathered their things and backed out of camp, and when Jack couldn't figure out how to empty the bullets from the gun to give it back safely, he just tossed it away into some random dark shrubbery, called to Craig to come find it, seized Eugene's hand, and off they ran. 

They holed up around midnight, under a splintery wooden table by an empty little outdoor kebab stand. Craig hadn't chased them, as far as Eugene could tell--if he really was as practical as all that, he probably did just hunt for his gun and then settle back down. _And may they be very happy together_ , he thought.

"I'll miss that man," he said into Jack's shoulder.

"Yeah?" Jack's arms tightened around him.

"His flashlight, anyway," Eugene said, and yawned. "How am I supposed to read you to sleep?"

"Maybe there are other ways to get to sleep." Jack's hands wandered.

"I cannot believe you just said that."

Jack laughed, low and raspy, his hands undeterred.

"Aren't you the one who was in a big rush to get to Sydney at last?" But despite his upbraiding tone, he snuggled in, and Jack seemed pleased to let him.

"Mmmmm, I forgot, Sydney," Jack said in his ear. "Well. There's tomorrow for that, right?"

"Uh-huh," Eugene said, his breath catching short.

"And the day after that."

"Yeah..."

"And the day--"

Eugene put a stop to Jack's musings very efficiently. And there was tomorrow for that, and the day after. And the day after that.

**Author's Note:**

> For Lydiabell, who introduced me to the game (thank you!) and was interested in seeing Jack and Eugene's first meeting...not quite the commentfic I intended. :)
> 
> Fill for the hurt/comfort bingo square "stranded/survival scenario".
> 
> Thanks to Arduinna, elynross, mary crawford, and mollyamory for beta help.


End file.
